UK Foreign Minister Dominic Raab today called the British ambassador’s brief detention in Tehran “illegal” and demanded an apology and “assurances” from Iran that no such incident will occur.
According to Efe, the British Foreign Minister said during an intervention in the London House of Commons that the arrest of that country’s ambassador, Rob Macaire, in Tehran (Iran’s capital) was “illegal” and, For this reason it demanded an apology from the Iranian Government.
Already today the British Prime Minister’s spokesman had said that Rob Macaire’s brief arrest was “an unacceptable violation of the Vienna Convention” and called on the Iranian ambassador in London, Hamid Baeidinejad, to assure that such actions would not return. to happen.
Macaire, who was briefly detained on Saturday, argued that he was present at the event, announced as a vigil in memory of the victims of the Ukrainian civilian plane crash shot down “by mistake” by the Iranian military, but left when protesters began shouting words from order.
Iran’s Foreign Ministry has threatened, however, to expel the British ambassador to the Iranian capital if another “mistake” occurred in London, maintaining the accusation to the diplomat of having participated in an “illegal rally”.
According to a statement issued by Tehran, quoted by France-Presse agency, it is called for the “immediate cessation of all interventionist and provocative action by the British embassy” in the capital, warning that “it will not simply summon the ambassador. [britânico] if this attitude persists ”.
Protesters burned a British and an Israeli flag on Sunday outside the British embassy in Tehran, shouting “death to Britain”.
Despite initially denying it, Iran admitted on Saturday that its armed forces shot down the Ukraine International Airlines plane on January 8 with a missile, killing 176 people, mostly Iranian and Canadian.
Iran emphasized that at the time of the attack, its defense was alert to a possible “total conflict” with the United States.
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